Memphis pimp found guilty of cross-country sex trafficking of two minors and eight women

Grace Harris (left) hugs victim advocate Kimberly Benson outside the Clifford Davis — Odell Horton Federal Building following the guilty verdict of Terrence "T-Rex" Yarbrough on sex-trafficking charges. Harris, who had four of Yarbrough's eight children, testified during the trial of beatings she endured while being forced to work as a prostitute. "Now I can go home and rest in peace and forget the nightmares." she said.

The Commercial Appeal

Terrence Arnett Yarbrough

The jury deciding the case of violent sex trafficker Terrence "T-Rex" Yarbrough had deliberated for about six hours Tuesday and a couple of hours Wednesday when victim Grace Harris began to fear the worst.

"It took them so long for the verdict," she said. "I thought: 'Oh, Lord!' I thought I was gonna have to pack up and move." She assumed if he was freed, he would find her and retaliate for her testimony.

But, after about 10 hours of deliberations over two days, the jury convicted Yarbrough, 36, of sex trafficking Harris, seven other women and two teens from 2006 to 2009.

The panel of six men and six women acquitted Yarbrough on one count of trafficking involving a woman who admitted working on her own as a prostitute before she met Yarbrough at a convenience store. That woman had testified about brutal beatings by the defendant, and being locked in a dog cage when she was tired and wanted to stop seeing clients.

Yarbrough's attorney, Eugene Laurenzi, had urged jurors to critically evaluate her testimony, and question whether she was forced or voluntarily worked as a prostitute. Laurenzi had argued that all of the women who testified were willing participants in a business and could have left at any time.

However, prosecutors Jonathan Skrmetti and Benjamin Hawk convinced jurors that Yarbrough targeted vulnerable women and teens, luring them with promises of love and later forcing them to work as prostitutes and give him all of the money.

Hawk said Yarbrough created "a climate of fear" by savagely beating his victims when they resisted his orders or tried to leave.

One of the women described being kicked in the mouth so hard for leaving him that it knocked three of her front teeth out. Jurors heard a recording of a phone call Yarbrough later made from jail during which he mockingly laughed and bragged that the young woman had to get dentures.

He punished other victims by beating them with a crowbar, belt, dog chain, lamp, padlock or his fists.

The office of U.S. Atty. Ed Stanton has earned national attention for aggressively prosecuting sex traffickers like Yarbrough.

Stanton issued a statement after Wednesday's conviction saying: "The brutal and depraved acts that this individual inflicted upon these women are almost impossible to fathom," and underscoring his commitment to prosecute trafficking cases in federal court, where convictions often come with heftier sentences — and no parole.

The jury also found Yarbrough guilty of food stamp fraud, which carries a five-year prison sentence, for allowing a female friend to spend the government money meant for one of his eight children.

Yarbrough, who had laughed in the courtroom before the verdict, didn't smile, or reveal much of a reaction, once he learned he was convicted.

He did immediately fire off another handwritten document, claiming he is a sovereign citizen who doesn't recognize the authority of the U.S. Constitution or of the trial judge, U.S. Dist. Judge S. Thomas Anderson. Anderson set Yarbrough's sentencing date for April 18, when the defendant faces a minimum of 15 years and up to life in a federal prison with no parole.

"I'm very happy," Harris, 34, said outside the courthouse.

Harris spent hours on the witness stand last week detailing, often through tears, her tumultuous four-year relationship with Yarbrough, whom she met when she was age 16 or 17.

He convinced her to drop out of school and move in with him, and she gave birth to four children, often enduring abuse that included having her head slammed into the wall. As time progressed, she said he kept her from her three sons and daughter, telling her she needed to work as a prostitute if she wanted to see them.

She testified that when she told him she didn't want to do that anymore: "He hit me so hard it broke off three of my teeth." She also described being beaten on her knees and legs with a metal pipe.

her breaking point came when Yarbrough said he planned to prostitute his own daughter, who was then 9, when she got a little older, she said.

After reliving her ordeal for jurors, Harris said, she had nightmares during the five-day trial that concluded Monday.

Jurors began deliberations Tuesday morning and as hours passed Wednesday, Harris feared they might be deadlocked. If they failed to reach a verdict, she knew she would have to testify before a new jury. "I would have done it again. I would have made them hear me," she said.

But a possible acquittal worried her most, she said. Her aunt, Anita Harris, was also worried: "What are they doing?" she said of jurors. "These girls went in there and poured their hearts out."

After 2 p.m., the victim was at home when she got a text from an FBI agent with the single word: "Guilty."

She shrieked "Yes! Guilty!" She and her aunt rushed to the federal courthouse Downtown to thank investigators and prosecutors.

Smiling and giddy, she told reporters to identify her by name, saying she now is a survivor with nothing to hide. She is receiving counseling and fighting to regain custody of her 11-year-old daughter and boys ages 13, 14 and 15.Anita Harris said Yarbrough's children struggle with the harm their father has done to others. She said her niece's oldest boy asks: "Why would he do stuff like that?"